I have "forced" time off this week. A mixed blessing if you ask me but I've been enjoying it. Today, Jamie and I hit up Tacolicious at 741 Valencia Street. After our herroing hour long wait at Outerlands yesterday, we were ready to kill some time while we awaited our next new-restaurant experience. Alas! No wait! In fact there was plenty of room - including at, our favorite, the bar. First off, we ordered way too much food - four tacos each is a bit excessive - but it was great. The margarita wasn't bad either. Nor was the "extra" beer we were offered. I recommend the cod fish and the beef cheek tacos. And, as aforementioned, the house margarita.

We continued on to do some hipster-esque shopping along Valencia St. and along the way we found this awesome swing. It's a placed a bit precariously (it's pretty easy to end up in a car's windshield) but a lot of fun nonetheless. We continued on our little adventure, stopping by Borderlands Cafe to visit my brother and grab an espresso along the way.

Finally, heading back up 18th St. home we were blessed with one of those amazing San Francisco winter sunsets hovering over Twin Peaks.

A good forced day off indeed.

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I'm a cynic. Yes it's true. But I've been following the Occupy Wall Street news for the past 19 days or so and am so impressed by the passion, energy and intelligence of the folks who have dedicated almost three weeks of their lives to force themselves upon an ignorant and sleepy America with its eloquent and simple message. It saddens me that there are still folks out there that don't know that this amazing nation-wide movement is happening so I figured I'd dedicate a post linking to the various key documents or news sources to make it easy to join in on the national dialogue around corporate greed, unrepresntative decomcracy and the growing wage gap among American workers.

Yesterday, a few of us passed into the Occupy SF site in front of Federal Reserve Bank. It was small and seemingly disorganized but this is to be expected as the SFPD has been coming in and removing the participants support systems such as food tents, tarps, etc. periodically. You can follow SFist's coverage of the SF solidarity movement over here. There is definitely room for growth so if you have a minute, stop by and say hi to these folks. Maybe bring them some cupcakes?

What is Occupy Wall St? On September 29, the New York General Assembly (the Occupy Wall Street folks as of that date) passed the "Declaration of the Occupation of New York City." It details what "brought us together." It's a good read and - contrary to what the media would like you to believe - clearly outlines the intention behind this mvement.

Don't live in New York or SF? Find your local revolution at Occupy Together. Daily Kos also has a great map of Occupy Wall Street events.

Wonkette has some amazingly snarky but also greatly informative coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protest, as does the Guardian (UK).

Finally, I found this video from Occupy LA pretty cool: 

I recently made a comment via Twitter to @sfist regarding the (ir)regularity of their posts and received a highly personal and offensive direct reply. Thanks, Brock. Granted, I wasn't exactly the most regular posting person; however, I still had faith in the non-commercial blogger/tweeter.

I wonder, though, what the value of non-commercial and non-Facebook (syndicated) blogging is now. Has blogging (formerly an ability for folks to write thoughts that would otherwise be stagnant) become nothing more but a channel for commercial or, gasp, mediocre opinion perpetuation? Do we care?

I seldom respond to long-comment threads on Facebook but this one hit a bit close to home considering it came from one of the candidates for Supervisor of my SF district (6). The initial post (and I believe all the subsequent comments) can be found here.

The jist of the post was regarding the City's new movement around using a sit-lie ordinance to help combat homelessness and vagrants on the street. I generally try and stay away from the topic of homelessness in SF because, well, it's pointless, dirty, volatile and trite. However, I decided to be a dumbass and provide this little rant:

I love a good housing debate but I'd WAAAAY prefer to see folks have access to stuff like, oh, you know, mental health clinics that don't take three weeks and a assertive vocabulary, cell phone and white male privilege to get into. I realize that housing is a key component of treatment adherence and providing a foundation for folks to access said services but it's become such a fucked-up tokenized albatross for this town. I've lived here my entire life and seen PC "activists" come and go; create a program here and there.

I'd find it insanely refreshing to see a holistic approach to well being of San Franciscans, especially with the huge lack of jobs increasing the size of those of us who are relying on public services such as Healthy SF, MUNI, the Community Health Network. Housing (and homelessness) I feel are partly the byproduct of these other services' failures.

Last night a gay couple were physically thrown out of a wine bar on Geary St. called Internos. They were called fagots and hustled out of the bar. Apparently, all they were doing was hugging and looking into each others eyes (how romantic!) and grabbing a drink before Showgirls at Midnight Mass.

Tonight, a few queens are pulling together a KISS-IN at 9pm at Internos Wine Bar. Hit up Anna Conda for more details.

I find this sad and surely goes against my previously held belief that there is no such thing as a truly straight bar in San Francisco. Even more upsetting to me is that this happened in my childhood neighborhood. Go figure.... I own a "The Richmond" t-shirt and wear it proudly as a local of the diverse and generally delightfully friendly neighborhood. This makes me want to somehow mark it up to denote the hate that apparently lies beneath the carpet of summer fog and good Russian & Chinese food.

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This is the view from my current location. I've enjoyed a fantastic day at the beach. Met wonderful new friends (check out www.velocet.us). Had a hard but rewarding bike ride. And now enjoying good sake on a nice, shady bench watching the folks on the sidewalk and the busses bads by while waiting for my sushi order. There's a faint smell of pot and a great faint mellow house beat coming from someone's apartment.

I live in a small SF neighborhood that is often considered a suburb of the "real" City, yet I can't think of any more urban experience than this.

... in San Francisco

→ 'Deep's Trikesaurus

These were on sale at the top of the tower at the DeYoung museum. Michael models one of the "classic" designs.